Breakout is one of the all-time greats in gaming: It’s simple to get into, and it provides a nice mix of skill and chance, allowing virtually anyone to clear its boards, yet remain engaging and challenging. Hyper Breaker Turbo is a game that takes the basic foundation set by Breakout and attempts to evolve it, though whether this version works or not is up for debate.

The biggest twist that I haven’t seen in other Breakout-style games is the player’s progression through a vertical corridor to reach a finish line. It’s not a straight shot, however; in addition to breakable blocks, there are a number of other obstacles along the way that can both help and hinder you. Walls and floors that give off an almost platformer-esque vibe are frequent, with other unique elements such as pinball-style bumpers or portals that move you around the screen.

There are also power-ups aplenty, as well as power-downs. The power-ups can affect your ball in numerous ways, be it by providing multiple balls, an extra-bouncy coating for your paddle, bullets from your paddle, and extra lives. Conversely, there are also instant-death items that will fall, and even a power-up that makes the ball act rather erratically until it’s lost– something it eventually seems keen on making a certainty as it actively dodges your paddle to reach the lava below.

The touch controls allow for vertical and diagonal movement along with the traditional horizontal, and you can even ram it into the ball to give it an extra bit of oomph. One bothersome thing is that the paddle is always hovering above your finger, making it feel strangely detached to a degree from your own actions; an option to align it directly with your fingertip would be welcome.

Additionally, each time you discover a new item, you get a prompt explaining what it does or how it works. The problem here is that getting the paddle back under control after tapping the screen to dismiss said prompt can be tricky, enough so that you might find yourself losing the ball before you can regain control. Similarly, an easier to tap pause button in the upper-right would be welcome for those times when the ball is speeding and, say, you need to answer the phone.

Touch controls being a little iffy aside, the biggest problem is one generally inherent to Breakout: The more blocks you break, the fewer blocks there are. Obvious though that may be, the issue is that without blocks to break, the ball can spend a considerable amount of time just bouncing around back and forth. At this point, the game becomes boring, though you have to keep your eyes open for that one stray bounce that might bring it back to you, hopefully allowing you to give it a new course to its goal. One other neat touch worth noting is that the title screen keeps an active and ever-growing tally of blocks broken by players worldwide.

So that’s Hyper Breaker Turbo. It’s not bad, but it’s not spectacular, either, and it feels like the downsides just edge out the upsides, though a lot of that could be chalked up to circumstance as well.

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The fine folks at Milkbag games have released Sidewords. A fun little diversion of a word game that is the devil child of crosswords and scrabble. For each level in the game the grid must be completed to win the level — this means that each letter at the top and side must be used. And not just the top or side, but each word must be made up of letters from the top and side to create a grid. It’s a pain, but in the right kind of way. Even the simplest of the levels can be a head scratcher until you get used to the game. Well worth the $3 as a diversion while we wait for Milkbag to finally release Snow Siege.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math.

It’s not always easy to tear your kids away from their tablets and make them do something edifying. Thankfully, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math relieves you of this task by turning mathematics into a fun touchscreen video game. Win win!

Aimed at children 3-6 years old, the app makes math fun by ‘gamifying’ it, turning simple mathematics problems into little challenges so that your pre-schooler can learn and play at the same time.

There are more than two dozen mini-games, split across three categories: Numbers, Shapes and Measurements, and Add and Subtract. According to the developer the difficulty of these puzzles is adaptive too, so kids of any ability can be both encouraged and challenged.

Mini Dayz has launched and it’s a pixelated 2.5D open world that’s as brutal as the desktop version. In this game, the player is dumped on shore with nothing. They must scavenge around for food, water, and weapons while avoiding attack. It’s the kind of game where the goal is to stay alive as long as possible. But that will never be very long. It’s oddly free and seems to only have an ad on the main screen — for now.

Pewter Games has brought their charming point and click adventure The Little Acre to iOS. It’s an amazingly beautiful animated adventure set in a sort of hybrid magical / alien world. A great all ages adventure and very fun.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, The House of Da Vinci by Blue Brain Games. There’s a reason Leonardo Da Vinci is the only renaissance figure who routinely shows up in video games you know. With his remarkable inventiveness and genius for creative problem-solving, Da Vinci was a gamer through and through. He was just born 500 hundred years too soon. Thankfully, there are studios like Blue Brain Games to bring him to life in videogame form. The House of Da Vinci, which comes to us courtesy of a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, is a puzzler that seeks to channel the artistry and innovation of its title character.

You play as one of Da Vinci’s more promising apprentices, and you have the challenging task of trying to work out where the hell he’s gone. Was he assassinated by the church? Who knows. Has he quietly gone into a retirement? Perhaps. Did he accidentally invent a shrink ray and shrink himself down to the size of an dustmite? Probably not. Da Vinci’s workshop looks beautiful, thanks to some impressive 3D graphics, and the in-game environment is crammed with all the elaborate machines and crazy inventions you’d expect to find in the workplace of a renaissance genius.(more…)

Poly Bridge is out now on iOS, and it’s good to have it! It’s a great game and many seem to agree that it’s the best bridge builder game available. But the iOS versions, so far, is missing the sandbox mode. I would hope that it’s coming soon in an update. If you are all interested in physics puzzlers, grab this one. (Note: the video is for the PC version, I have yet to see a trailer for the mobile version, the developer Dry Cactus isn’t that great at marketing…)

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